


In Stone

by phoenixflight



Category: Historical RPF
Genre: Angst, Grumpiness, History doesn't deserve the things I do to it, Homoeroticism, M/M, Melodrama, Narrator is a grumpy bastard, Renaissance Era, Sculpture, Stone Masonry, Unreliable Narrator, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-26
Updated: 2013-08-26
Packaged: 2017-12-24 17:17:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,806
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/942516
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/phoenixflight/pseuds/phoenixflight
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is the story of how Michelangelo met the boy who would model for his most famous sculpture, and then proceded to be grumpy at him for five thousand words. (I'm so tired, forgive me.)<br/>Also known as: Children, this is what sexual repression does to your psyche. It's ok to be gay! :D </p><p> </p><p>  <i>God is an artist, like me. The greatest art of any age only shadows his glorious sculptures of breathing flesh and blood and bone, warm, strong, supple, sweet, bright, beautiful. It is only right to admire God’s creation with passion, because what could inspire greater passion than the divine?</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	In Stone

**Author's Note:**

> So I am no scholar of the Renaissance, and this is really just grumpy, indulgent homoeroticism, although it started out as an experiment in narration, since Michelangelo was by all accounts, one nasty, stand-offish bastard.  
> I spent so much time staring at photos of David while writing this, from every possible angle, you have no idea. I feel like a creep for looking at a statue's butt for half an hour straight.

God's image is a thing of beauty. 

Strength, grace, symmetry, the human body possesses the potential for perfection. It is the task, the calling, the duty of the artist, to capture beauty in all its forms, and immortalize it in paint or stone. 

So it is only fitting that the pinnacle of God's creation should be celebrated in the entirety of its glory. 

At least, that's what I've always told myself. 

My mother died when I was young, and I spent much of my childhood living with a stonecutter and his wife. Among the first tools I learned to use was the chisel. I was raised on the floor of his workshop, hands and feet chalky with rock dust, and in the booming, echoing quarries, where men sweated and toiled and broke their backs to hew massive blocks of marble, which were carted to the stonemason's to be... discovered. 

"Look into the stone," My papa used to say. "What do you see?" 

The first time, I answered wrong. "Rock," I said. "Its a rock." 

It was a flattish slab the size of his hand, which had chipped off of a block. 

"No," he told me, "It's a bird." And then he picked up his chisel, and, in a dozen quick strokes, carved the rough outline of a winged creature in flight. 

"Now," he said gruffly, handing me a fist-sized chunk of marble. "Find something. And don't come to supper until you do."

From then on, I looked for the shapes in the stone. Sometimes I only saw their rough outline, a vague approximation of what they could be. But sometimes they shone out; almost as if the rock were water and the sculpture I was carving lay not in the heart of stone, but at the bottom of a clear pool. 

That's what I saw when Signor Decatti from the wool merchants’ guild invited me to look at a half finished sculpture he wanted completed. 

It was a grey and humid day in spring when I first laid eyes on my David. The rough block had been standing in a work yard for years, and its unpolished surface was weathered and streaked with grime. 

The hand of a dead artist had chipped the rough beginnings of draperies around the base of the figure, and I saw the fuzzy outline of a woman. I thought critically that the stance was too broad, the fall of the fabric too course. Then Decatti said, "It was meant to be David." 

And suddenly the true shape of the stone was blazing out at me, clear and sharp and radiant. 

He was a creature of supple strength and aching beauty. I almost couldn't breath for the force of it pounding against my ribcage, as if my bones were his prison of stone. This was no still sculpture to be found at leisure, but a living being, struggling screaming to be freed. 

I put my hand out to touch him, and started when my fingers met rough, formless stone.  
Behind me, Decatti was still talking. “We’ve made overtures to some of the other local talent,” he was saying. “Da Vinci, of course, and that young lad, Raphael. We’ll see what comes of it all, but if you want the commission-” 

I didn’t take my eyes off David. "I want it." 

 

In the end, I got the commission through sheer stubbornness, and went to the tavern to celebrate. Never being a very celebratory person, I ended up sitting in a dim, smoky corner for a long time, as usual, and watching the pretty boy behind the bar, as usual, but I passed up my usual cheap wine in favor of something expensive and Greek, in honor of the occasion. 

And when I returned to my shop, there he was. In the dark yard, shrouded by an oiled cloth.

Slowly, willing my hands not to shake, I pushed the stiff fabric away and let it fall with a rustle to the ground. The one lamp burning by the gate cast deep rough shadows from the uncut stone. It was more difficult to see his shape but I could feel him straining against the stone, like a heartbeat.

Since sleep was now far distant, I picked up my chisel, ran my hand over the rock-  
And stopped.

For the first time in my life, I didn’t know where to start. I could see him so clearly, but as soon as I tried to focus on a knee or a hand, it blurred and slid away. I was frightened to make the first cut.

I don’t know how long I stood there, clutching my chisel, but my lamp was guttering and choking on the last of its oil when I slammed indoors and stumbled to my cot. Even then, I lay awake staring into the dark, and as grey dawn seeped around the door, a man of cold stone and burning beauty walked in my dreams.

The next morning when my apprentice Daniel knocked on the door to rouse me, I was bleary-eyed and scowling as I answered. 

“You didn’t star work on that sculpture? When they brought it in they said you were so excited about it you yelled at the foreman. I’d have thought you’d have started it last night. I waited around to help but you never came in. Are you looking for a model?”

I had been staring at dust motes with my eyes glazed and head drooping, but that made me snap awake. “A model?”

Daniel looked up. “Yeah, sure. Why not?” 

“I don’t need one!” I blustered, setting about polishing a little carved nymph viciously. 

“It might help you get started, seeing what you’re looking at.” He lifted the chunk of stone he was working on, showing me the crude flower that was half revealed, and in the other hand the slightly wilted rose he was carving from. 

I refrained from telling him the rock he was carving had really contained a lily, not a rose; I had gotten my nose broken by a fellow apprentice for a similar comment when I was seventeen. 

Instead, I grunted. 

“I mean,” he continued blithely. “Just someone who looks a little like him.”

“Delivery!” someone yelled, out in the yard. 

I scowled as I stomped out into the courtyard to hold the gate open for the stonecutter’s boys. “No one looks like David.” 

The crew traipsed in, six or eight boys carrying huge blocks of stone from the back of the cart across the yard, in slings across their shoulders. The life of a stonecutter was painful and dangerous. My papa was missing two fingers and all the toes on his left foot, totally crushed by unforgiving rock. His entire body was scared and his hands were dark with discolored calluses where the stone dust was trapped beneath the skin. 

These boys were young, their bodies not yet broken, still in the prime of their strength, all bulging, trembling muscle straining against stone, skin gleaming with the rank sweat of hard labor in the oppressive summer heat. They were likely slaves. I had done my share of hauling stone, and didn’t envy them at all. And these were the lucky ones, allowed every few months to take a week off from grueling in the mines, to come to the city with the newest load. 

“I’ll do it on my own,” I continued to Daniel, gesturing for them to stack the blocks against the far fence. “I was just tired.” 

I turned my attention back to my sketchpad, flipping through to a blank page, and twirling my charcoal between my fingers. 

“That’s all,” the head stone hauler said. “See you next month Master Michelangelo.”

“Hmm.” I glanced up perfunctorily, my eyes sliding past him to where one of the boys was aligning the last block against the wall with a scraping noise. He turned and I caught a glimpse of his face. 

His features were striking, more handsome than beautiful, with a heavy broad brow and strong nose, but the delicate cheekbones and full lips, a strange contrast of boyish softness and the strength of manhood. The odd combination of features however, when turned very slightly to the side, became the most striking, marvelous profile I had ever seen, and I floundered under the weight of déjà vu. It was like seeing the world through bright sunlight – stark, hard and gilded. 

Daniel was still gabbling but I couldn’t hear him over the rushing in my ears. I looked down to see my hands had clenched so tightly that I had snapped the stick of charcoal. Glittering black dust coated my fingers. I scrabbled for my sketchpad, smearing the pages as I fumbled for a blank one. Vaguely I heard the crew of stone cutters clatter out of the gate and the rattle of their wagon down the street. His face, the boy’s face, David’s face, was swimming in my mind, and my hands shook as I scrawled desperately with a nub of charcoal.

The lines writhed, crawled, refusing to lie flat the way I saw the in my memory. The picture emerging was almost but not quite right. I rubbed out one eye with a thumb, leaving a messy dark smear, and tried the outline again. Big eyes, surprisingly clear and dreamy under a heavy brow. The second try was worse than the first. 

I huffed out a frustrated breath and slammed my hand down on the sturdy table. Daniel jerked in surprise. “What was that for?” 

“I can’t do it,” I groaned. “Something’s wrong with me. I can’t make it look right.” The booklet smacked dully on the tabletop.

I turned away as Daniel picked it up. “David?” he asked .

Breathing out heavily, I nodded. 

“See, this is good. I knew you’d get it.”

“Its wrong,” I groaned. 

“Well it’s a start,” Daniel chirped. “More than you had this morning. By tonight you’ll be ready to pick up the chisel!” 

“No! You don’t understand. I saw him.” 

Daniel blinked. “David? What? When? Just now?”

“Just now, just now!” I waved my hands wildly. “That boy!”

“Which boy? The one of the delivery men?”

“No, their donkey,” I snarled. “What do you think?”

Daniel’s eyes were wide. “Then what are you waiting for? That’s your model!”

“What?”

It was Daniel’s turn to wave wildly. “Go after him!”

“But!”

“No time to waste! Go!”

Against any reason or precedent, I leapt to my feet and bolted toward the gate, not sure quite what I was doing, but knowing something was infinitely preferable to nothing. 

I burst out into the backstreet, stumbling slightly. It was empty but for a woman and her chickens. “Which way did they go?” I cried.

She peered at me through milky cataracts. “I don’t know, lad,” she quavered. “Where did my Lucetta go, that’s what I’d like to know.”

That gave me pause. “Who?”

“Lucetta. There’s only five and there should be six.” I glanced around and spotted her missing hen nestled in the shade behind a water barrel. 

“Did you see a cart go by not long ago?” I asked, picking up the recalcitrant chicken and handing it to her. 

“Oh thank you son. You’re a good boy. Yes, I might have seen a cart.” 

“Which way did it go?” I gritted out, trying not to dance with impatience. 

“Which way did it go, please,” she corrected, and I almost snarled. “Young men must learn their manners. Toward the square I think.” 

My “thank you” was left in a cloud of dust as I took off down the street at a run. 

The piazza bustled with traders, artisans and shopkeepers. There were carts loaded with pottery, sacks of flour, crates of geese, but no sign of the stonemason’s wagon. The crowd eddied around me, thicker than water, dragging at me as I struggled through it. 

As I did, I calculated frantically. They came from the marble quarries near Carrara, so they would be heading for the west gate. Before they could begin their return journey, they would have to exchange donkeys at the stable. I had beaten them. I must have. Still, my heart was pounding with the fear of being too late, the thought that he, my perfect David, might have walked out of my life forever. 

At that moment I heard hooves behind me on the cobbles, and swung around but it was only a man on horseback, dressed finely, who glanced at me in distain as he passed. I scowled after him, and didn’t bother to turn as I next heard the clop of hooves, until a voice said, “Master Michelangelo?” 

I spun to see the stonecutter and his cart, empty of its load, with the slave boys riding in the back, laughing to each other. They had stopped their talk and roughhousing to stare at me. He sat between two of the others, shoulders pressed between theirs, a smear of dirt across his face, as if he wasn’t something special. As if he wasn’t David. 

I cleared my throat, and forced myself to address the foreman. “I’m interested in hiring one of your boys as a model.” 

He shrugged, and jerked his head. “Get on with it.” 

I let my eyes slide back to the boy, and met his gaze for the first time. He was frowning slightly. “You. Would you model for me? For a sculpture,” I added, when he blinked slowly at me. “I would pay you, and lodge you. Here. In the city. Until I finish the statue. Then you can go home to Carrara.” I ground my teeth at the lack of response. “Will you?” 

The boy glanced at the foreman, who just waved a hand, looking impatient to be gone. Looking back at me, he nodded. “I will.” He unfolded himself from between his friends, and jumped down from the cart. 

Barking something, the foreman slapped the haunches of the mules, and the cart creaked into motion again, and the other boys seemed jolted to life as well, raising a chorus of farewells in their heavy northern accents as the cart started off down the road again, out of the city. The boy stood looking after them, his face inscrutable, for a few moments, before jerking his head back to me. 

“Come on then,” I muttered. 

 

Back at my shop, Daniel was chattering to one of the laborers in the courtyard. When he saw us, his face lit up and he came trotting over, eager as a hunting hound, but twice as friendly. “Hello! I’m so glad he caught you. It’s going to be exciting, having someone else around. I’m Daniel, what’s your name?” 

With some chagrin, I realized I hadn’t asked. “Pietr,” he said quietly, cocking his head curiously at Daniel. 

“Well, welcome Pietr,” Daniel said cheerfully. “Let me show you around.”

“I’d like to get started some time this year,” I called, as Daniel gripped Pietr by the arm and dragged him in the direction of the workshop. 

“In a minute!” Daniel yelled back, before continuing. “...and that’s the privy over there by the woodpile.”

Shaking my head, I stomped toward the building, ducking into the cool dimness. There, I shed my jacket, gathering up my notebook and sketches, as well as the heaviest chisels. By the time I returned to the yard, Daniel and the boy were standing by the block that held my David, apparently conversing comfortably, but they fell silent as I approached. Daniel looked expectant, and the boy just watched me through his eyelashes, those huge eyes guarded, cast toward the ground. I had a sudden impulse to ask what they had been talking about, and was vaguely surprised - who cared what adolescent boys discussed? 

“Take your clothes off,” I said, instead, directing the words vaguely at Pietr. His eyes flicked up to mine, and he blinked once. “You heard me,” I added. “You’re no good to me dressed.” Behind me, Daniel made a noise that might have been a strangled laughed. 

The boy, Pietr, hesitated. He was wearing a tunic and vest over his stonehauling loincloth. I huffed an irritated breath. “I’m not- it’s not- It’s just art,” I scowled. 

“No one would bother to spy on the yard,” Daniel piped up, “and the fence is solid anyway. I’ll stay, if it makes you feel better,” he added, and I glared in his direction, but Pietr was stripping out of his tunic, and I forgot why I was irritated with Daniel. 

After too many moments, I coughed, blinked fast, and picked up my chisel. 

God is an artist, like me. The greatest art of any age only shadows his glorious sculptures of breathing flesh and blood and bone, warm, strong, supple, sweet, bright, beautiful. It is only right to admire God’s creation with passion, because what could inspire greater passion than the divine? And the boy was gorgeous, tall and tightly muscled, shoulders broader than his hips, limbs lean and graceful. 

He kept his eyes cast down at the sawdust mingling with the dust in the yard as I paced around him. It was so difficult to resist dragging my fingers over his skin like I would over a new block of marble. I could see the tracks his sweat had made in the dust on his back, the scars on his forearms, lighter than his sunbaked skin. His chest rose and fell with every breath. I wanted to put my hands over his ribcage, feel the thump of his heartbeat, the warmth and vitality of him, feel the humanness which David lacked. His shape was no longer fighting in a prison of stone, but here, standing before me, close enough to touch, and so beautiful it hurt, deep in my stomach. 

I spent an hour walking around Pieta, positioning him, making minor corrections, then changing my mind and repeating the process, until I settled on the poised anticipation. This David was a young David, still untried, confident but tense. I nudged Pietr’s hip, making him shift his weight onto one leg, and savored the warm skin under my hand. 

Much to my frustration, I found myself unable to focus on any one part of him for long. As soon as I began one rough outline, my chisel would grow impatient with the slow work, ready to be finding elegant curves, smooth lines. My hands itched for skin, stone, as the blows to the chisel vibrated through my hands. I took breaks when the feeling in them numbed, pacing and scowling until I could get back to my work. 

Daniel worked diligently, though I snapped at him more than ever, paranoid about any hands but my own on David. Pieta just stood, still and calm in the beating sun, like someone used to taking orders, and waiting when there were none. His skin glistened faintly with sweat as the day wore on. 

In the end, it was Daniel who remembered to bring him a brimming ladle of water from the bucket inside. As Pieta took it, I saw him smile gratefully, a soft expression, unlike his usual brooding composure, before tipping it back and draining it. I looked away from the drops of water sliding down the arch of his bobbing throat as he swallowed. 

The sun was setting by the time I called a halt. The shadows were long across the yard, turning the tones of dust and ochre into ocean blue and bruised violet. 

“I’m starving,” Daniel said, setting down his tools and stretching. Pieta shook himself like a dog coming out of water, and made a noise of agreement. “Come on,” Daniel added, and I glanced over my shoulder sharply, but it hadn’t been directed at me. “We’ll go get dinner at the pub. Can always get hot stew, not much, but not to be sneezed at. We’re off, master!” he finished, raising his voice. 

“Don’t you need money to get the boy a room?” I called.

“Oh no, he’s going to stay with me! Signora Valespi won’t mind. That way is easier. And it’ll be nice to have company. We’re off to dinner now!” 

The gate clunked in its frame, and their footsteps clomped away over the cobbles in the streets. 

The pub on the corner was where I ate most nights too. As Daniel said, the food wasn’t special but it was cheap and hearty, and had the added advantage of being only a two minute walk from the gate of the yard. That night, instead, I walked fifteen minutes across the Piazza to an equally unremarkable pub half a mile away. 

 

It didn’t take long to settle into a routine. The boys arrived together at dawn, took their midday meals together and left together in the evening. Under my eye in the yard, they didn’t talk, but I was accustomed to catching the trailing ends of their conversations entering and leaving the yard. For the most part, I ignored their camaraderie, though once or twice I snapped at Daniel for neglecting his work. 

After some weeks, when the rough outline had been finished, and the stone chipped as close as I dared to the final figure without meticulous attention, I began on individual features, using smaller chisels and taking far more time. 

As was often my want, I began with the face because it would reveal some of the sculpture’s character, release some of its trapped identity, and help form the rest of the figure.

“Look this way.” Pietr obediently tipped his chin toward me, not meeting my eyes, but looking off over my shoulder. I would have been offended, except it was a very dignified pose. David would have approved. Squinting at the curve of his nose, I placed the edge of my chisel in the rough grove of stone that would be an eye socket, and then frowned. “Daniel, do you have my smallest chisel?” 

“No. Is it inside on your workbench?” 

“I don’t know, is it?” 

“You had it last!” Daniel muttered, the closest he ever got to anger. 

“Never mind,” I grumbled. “I’ll get it.” 

Huffing under my breath, I stalked to the door of my workroom and stepped into the dimness. I found the chisel eventually, on the floor, rolled under the workbench. Really, was neatness and attention to detail too much to ask? 

As I shouldered my way back through the door, I heard Daniel’s chatter – nothing unusual – and someone laughing. Startled, I paused. It was Pietr, eyes creased up and mouth stretched in a grin, laughing at something my apprentice had said. His smile was too wide for his jaw, I noted critically; it set deep dimples into his cheeks and his teeth were slightly crooked. He really was much more beautiful when calm and composed. 

Daniel was chuckling too. “Of course that wasn’t the last time it happened,” he was saying. “I hate to think of what the sheep have suffered since.” 

Pietr made a totally undignified spluttering noise, eyes shutting with laughter. Really, it was an embarrassment. 

Daniel had tried to tell me the sheep-and-shepherd joke once, and I had told him brusquely that not only was it blasphemy and not at all funny, but it was also probably anatomically impossible.

“If you two are done acting like distracted boys, maybe we can finish sometime today,” I suggested, perhaps more sharply than the situation required. 

“Right, right, sorry,” Daniel nodded, turning back to his part of the blocking, grinning to himself. Pietr resumed his position, but he was still a lingering smile in the creases of hiseyes. 

“I can’t carve you like that,” I snapped, “you look happy.” 

He flicked his gaze up, meeting mine for once, and said, almost angrily “Aren’t you ever happy?” 

It was the most direct thing he had said to me since he told me his name, months ago. 

“Of course,” I spluttered. “I’m happy when I have a _competent model_.” 

“Of course,” he repeated, dropping his gaze, expression sliding from his face. After a moment, I went back to work where I had left off on the arch of his nose, but I was distracted and cross, and the stone refused to show me its shape beneath my hands. I kept remembering Pietr’s laughter, and no matter how many times I glanced at his composed profile beside me, my chisel kept slipping into a groove which had begun to look horribly like the suggestion of a dimple. I called a halt early, sent both boys home, and went to bed with a bottle of wine, instead of going out for supper. 

 

Pietr’s hands were infuriating. Once I started looking closely at them to carve David’s hands, I couldn’t stop noticing them. He had huge hands. They were strong, and scarred from the mines, veins and muscle standing out cleanly, knuckles bulging, fingers long and capable. 

My eyes followed them when he wiped his mouth after taking a drink of water from the dipper, fingers coming away gleaming and damp. Unlike the rest of him, his fingers were rarely still. He tapped them and twitched them, played with bits of rock debris. He would run his hands through his hair, or over the back of his neck, swiping away the summer sweat. 

Once, when he and Daniel arrived in the morning, Daniel stumbled over a loose cobble on his way into the yard, and I saw Pietr reach out to grab him, saw one hand close on Daneil’s elbow, the other in the small of his back. The fabric of Daniel’s tunic wrinkled between his fingers as Pietr fisted his hand there. It remained there for a beat after Daniel had found their balance, and the noise of their laughter drifted across the yard on the sluggish breeze. 

Each evening, with the workshop locked and the boys gone to their lodgings, I couldn’t stop contemplating his hands. I would stare at David, as his hands gradually took shape, wondering had I gotten this knuckle or that vein just right? Such self doubt was beneath me, but somehow I had failed to capture in stone whatever it was that so fascinated me about his hands in flesh.

Even in the shroud of night I couldn’t escape it. When I slept now, it was not David who haunted my dreams, and Pietr’s hands filled the darkest of my thoughts in the small hours of the morning. 

 

A year turned in Florence, from hot to balmy and back to scorching. David’s hair was mostly still unformed, just roughed out in a stony halo, which was starting to look a little ridiculous, since otherwise, he was basically complete. Daniel had even begun polishing his shoulders and back. (“You’ve been polishing that spot for an hour Daniel – move on to someplace that needs it. No, not there, I haven’t finished there, can’t you see?”) Not only was hair delicate and repetitive carving, but I was also faced with working around Agostino’s original hacking at the block, which had left deep scars in the marble at head height. It would be an irritating task, and I was shamelessly putting it off. 

There were other things I could be doing profitably, anyway. Not a lot. But some. Definitely. Probably. Like perfecting the flow of David’s musculature. So I worked with a rasp and my smallest chisel on minute alterations to David’s arms, stomach and legs. All day. The yard was lit by torchlight now, and Pietr and Daniel were both yawning so I dismissed my apprentice. He mumbled goodbye to Pietr as he pulled on his jacket and departed. 

I growled at the sculpture. For the life of me I couldn’t get the dimple of muscle where the top of his thigh met his buttocks correct, and I refused to give up till I did. Kneeling on the ground by the statue, I called to Pietr, “come here.”

Suddenly he was standing beside me, and I was at eye level with the jut of his hipbone, vision filled with his skin, deeply tanned from working all but naked in the quarry. There was a faint patina of rock dust clinging to his him, and I resisted the urge to brush it off. 

Instead I nudged his leg with the tips of my fingers to align him with the statue, then picked up my chisel and eyed the back of his thigh. It was difficult to remember what I was doing with his bare body so close. With my right hand I placed the chisel against the stone, but I still couldn’t feel the shape it should be. 

Without thinking, I lifted my left hand, and ran it lightly up his thigh. He jumped slightly, leg tensing under my touch. I could feel the definition of muscle, the strength built by a lifetime of hauling stone, the warm silkiness of his skin, and the faint ridges of old scars.  
As my fingers brushed against the crease between his buttock and his thigh, he drew a breath as if to speak, and I froze, but he merely shifted his legs a little further apart. I let out my breath. 

And skimmed my hand over his backside, smooth and round and solid with the warmth and give which told me it was human flesh, not stone. He made a little noise in his throat, but this time I didn’t stop, but ran my hand back down his thigh, rubbing my thumb over the back of his knee so he shivered. My heart was pounding and by breath shallow and uneven with arousal as I ran my fingers up the inside of his thigh, and then squeezed gently. He actually groaned and his hips jerked. 

My erection was throbbing against the inseam of my trousers, and I shifted slightly, trying to relieve the pressure as I started to massage the tense muscles lightly until I was kneading his backside and he was rolling his hips ever so slightly back into my hand and gasping faintly on every breath. In a haze of lust I leaned forward to press my lips against the tender skin in the hollow of his hipbone, and he actually mewled, hips bucking, head thrown back. The hot, damp head of his erection bumped against my cheek and his taught stomach quivered. I dug my fingers into the muscle of his backside with a groan, and opened my mouth, tasting the musk and sweat of him, and we were both moaning gently and all I could smell and feel and hear was him and yes yes yes ye-

The chisel slipped. 

It skittered down the statue’s thigh and thudded into the marble base. I jerked back from Pietr so sharply that I over balanced and sprawled on my back, stone cold and rough through my shirt, which clung damply to my back. 

Pietr had jumped too, and had turned his back. His voice was rough and low but rang too loud in the silence. “I’ll go Signor, I’m sorry, just let me get my clothes….” 

Waving off his words, I struggled to my feet, hurrying to my workbench and picking up the first thing that came to hand – a small piece, a woman, unfinished, scowling at it. Behind me, Pietr said, “Should I… return tomorrow, Signor?” 

I realized I was clenching the woman so tightly that the rough edges bit into my palm. “Yes. Yes, we will continue as always.” 

“Of course.” There was the shuffle of footsteps, rustle of fabric, and then the click of the door. 

I stood for a long moment, and then threw the half-finished figurine with all my strength onto the flagstones, where it shattered. 

David had his head turned away, but there was scorn and insolent reproof in every line of his posture. 

 

David was finished, but for the sanding and polishing, on a brilliant day in autumn, just as the season had begun to become tolerably cool again after a scorching summer. All the rock had been stripped away, to reveal the shape underneath – immortally beautiful, and unexpectedly haughty. 

As promised, Pietr was paid handsomely for the season he had spent well fed and comfortable sharing Daniel’s lodging, and not slaving in the mine. It might even be enough for him to buy his freedom, though I certainly gave no real thought to that. 

The day he departed, I just happened to have woken early and gone to the pub on the corner to eat. It was across the way from Daniel’s lodgings, and it was really only chance that I saw them making their farewells. My eye was so familiar with Pietr’s face and stature by that time, more so even than Daniel’s, though he had been my apprentice for years, that when I passed them on the street, I couldn’t help but recognize him, even in the crowd of morning tradesmen and market-goers. 

I did not mean to stop and watch them, but my step slowed as I waited for the thronged street to clear a little before I tried to cross. I saw their heads bent together, speaking earnestly, saw them clasp their hands together, then embrace. I knew every inch of Pietr’s arms better than my own body, could have sculpted from memory the hands that clutched at the back of Daniel’s tunic, could have named the muscles that flexed as Pietr pulled him close. 

Over Daniel’s shoulder I got another glimpse of those undignified dimples on Pietr’s cheeks and that awkward, brilliant grin that I had only seen perhaps once or twice. I thought of the months they had spent together, sleeping side by side in Signora Valespi’s spare room, sharing a cot, perhaps, and who knew what else. 

My stomach twisted, and I turned away. I was no longer hungry. 

In years to come, many people hailed David as one of my greatest works – I couldn’t blame them. David had an aura that commanded attention, but that was not my skill, it was simply the soul of the stone, the force of the shape I had found. It was praised by the great masters who were my contemporaries and rivals, Da Vinci and Bottecelli, and by the city fathers, and eventually erected in a place of honor in front of the Palazzo della Signora, to guard the Republic of Florence with the strength and courage that defeated Goliath. 

David was a masterpiece, and by all rights I should have been proud. Daniel was. When he opened a shop of his own, even years later the prestige of having had a hand in David’s birth did no harm to his reputation. 

But all the same, I would often go out of the way to avoid the Piazza della Signora, where my David cast a long shadow in the midday sun.


End file.
